The City of Webster City and Hamilton County will hold a joint meeting today, during which it is expected to ratify an agreement that will consolidate its two existing dispatch services into one unified service.

This meeting is at 2 p.m. in the council chambers of City Hall, 400 Second Street, Webster City.

The meeting will require separate votes from the City Council of Webster City and the Hamilton County Board of Supervisors.

The proposal has been in discussion for months.

In April, the city shared the results of an operational audit of the Webster City Police Department, conducted at the city’s behest by McGrath Consulting Group, Jamestown, Tennessee. McGrath brought six experts to Webster City in late 2024 and spent several days interviewing every member of the local police department.

Among the conditions cited in the audit was an opportunity to improve local dispatch operations, saying the current system is sometimes redundant, according to a Daily Freeman-Journal story published in April.

“The use of multiple communications channels between the two agencies ‘increases the potential for misinterpretations and errors,'” according to the consultant’s report.

Right now, if a Webster City caller phones 911, the call is not answered by WCPD’s dispatch. Instead, it’s routed to the county sheriff’s dispatch, which handles all E911 calls. Once the county dispatch learns the call originated in Webster City, it must then relay it to the WCPD dispatch.

The 911 and E911 systems are both emergency phone systems, but a basic 911 system only provides a direct point of contact to a public safety agency.

E-911 is more specific; it provides the caller’s address and the telephone number of the call, according to the Federal Communications Commission.